By Steve Habel, Senior Editor
AUSTIN, Texas — It’s hard to miss Texas center Mohamed Bamba. He is 6-foot-11 and has a 7-foot-9 wingspan, after all, but for most of Saturday’s game against Louisiana Tech, the Longhorns’ prize freshman was a non-factor because he was sitting on the bench with foul trouble.
But once Bamba threw caution to the wind at the end of the game when he was needed the most, the Longhorns flourished.
Dylan Osetkowski scored 22 points and Bamba added [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]14, including 10 in the final six minutes, to lead Longhorns to a 75-60 victory over Louisiana Tech before a crowd of 8,828 fans at the Frank Erwin Center.
The Longhorns never could put away Louisiana Tech and led just 58-52 before Bamba took charge.
“My teammates looked to me to score in that part of the game,” Bamba said. “I wanted to play aggressively and smart and be the Mo I am in practice every day. I can build on staying aggressive and doing so for the whole 40 minutes. The real key is that we got stops when we needed them.”
Bamba, widely considered to be a sure lottery pick if, as expected, he leaves the 40 Acres after only one year, scored 10 of the Longhorns’ 17 points over a four-and-a-half-minute stretch that clinched the victory for Texas.
“Mo played with an aggressiveness and looseness about him at the end of the game when he was playing with four fouls,” Texas coach Shaka Smart said. “He just decided to attack, but he did so with an awareness. There were some plays down the stretch that Mo could have been whistled for a foul but wasn’t.”
Jacob Young added 10 points for Texas (7-3), and freshman Jericho Sims added 9 points and 8 rebounds in 20 minutes of court time.
Bambi pitched in a game-high nine rebounds and five blocked shots. UT outshot Louisiana Tech, 49 percent to 33.9 percent, over the course of the game and had 14 assist to six by the Bulldogs.
Daquan Bracey led all scorers with 24 points for Louisiana Tech, while Derric Jean and Anthony Duruji added 10 points apiece for the Bulldogs.
Texas held the Bulldogs to 29.6 percent shooting in the first half and led by as many as 17 points before settling for a 38-26 advantage at intermission.
Osetkowski paced the Longhorns with 13 points, while Duruji led Louisiana Tech with eight points off the bench.
The Bulldogs cut the Texas lead to eight points on a 3-pointer by Jean with 13:39 to play and then to 52-46 on a three-point play by Bracey with 11:19 remaining.
“We didn’t execute and grind through when we got the game down to four points,” Louisiana Tech coach Eric Konkol said. “When we needed a bucket, we just couldn’t get it. Texas has some big rim-protectors and that was a huge factor.”
The Longhorns regained their stride and pushed their lead back onto double digits on six consecutive points by Bamba, who was shackled with foul trouble and made the difference as he played with four fouls for the final 12 minutes.
Smart said the emphasis was to get the ball inside and was pleased with the results. “We didn’t shoot as many threes as usual (just 14 for the game) but that’s okay because we wanted to get in the paint and work inside,” he said.
Ultimately, Smart would like to see his three big men — Bamba, Osetkowski and Sims — in the game at the same time as a Triple Towers set. All are versatile and athletic and would provide the Longhorns with a frontcourt that few teams could answer.
Texas returns to the court Monday when it hosts Tennessee State in its next-to-last non-conference contest before beginning the Big 12 gauntlet at home versus Kansas Dec. 29.
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